The first female professor to work at a state university in Colorado, Mary Rippon, had a secret that Victorian society forced her to keep hidden: a marriage and child with one of her students.
This relationship remained unknown for nearly a century and was brought to light in the book "Separate Lives: The Story of Mary Rippon” by Colorado historian Silvia Pettem.
Rippon was a French and German professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1878. She went on to become the Germanic language and literature department head at CU. Pettem says she had to keep her secret in order to continue creating space for women in higher education.
“I don't want to tarnish her reputation at all. She was a very highly respected professor. She was number one in her field. She was the only woman teaching,” Pettem told CPR News. “So if (this) had gotten out, it would've been a huge scandal and she wouldn't have been able to continue with her career. “
Pettem discovered Rippon’s private life in the archives at CU Boulder. The librarian told her how in the 1970s, a man claiming to be a descendant of “Ms. Rippon” had dropped off her diaries to the archives. No one felt the need to dig into them until Pettem came along twenty years later.
Rippon, who was an unmarried woman in the public eye, made less money than her male colleagues. The idea at the time was that a man who was working most likely had an entire family to support and needed to make more money. Ironically, she was also supporting an entire family under her salary. And even after she later divorced, she went on to support her daughter and her ex-husband in his second marriage along with his new family.
Pettem originally self-published the book in 1999 but wrote another draft in 2024 – "Separate Lives: Uncovering the Hidden Family of Victorian Professor” – updating it with newer information, such as the posthumous degree Rippon received in 2006 and the “Mary Rippon Endowed Scholarship” for single parents. The updated draft was picked up and published by Lyons Press.
“(When I first) shopped this manuscript around, I got the feedback from several publishers that if I didn't fictionalize the story and fill in some gaps, nobody would be interested. And I wasn't willing to do that because to me, the compelling part of her story is that it's true,” Pettem said. “It's such an interesting story about how she completely separated her public life from her private life in order to keep teaching. I wanted to do it my way, so I did.”
Pettem has been a Colorado historian since the 1970s, writing for The Daily Camera. She’s written more than 20 books about prominent women in Colorado’s history. Rippon was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985. Pettem spends a lot of time at the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, where Rippon and many of those women are laid to rest.
Pettem herself has a grave marker placed near Rippon's grave.
“I want to, at some point, hopefully a long time from now, be cremated and scattered up in the mountains. But I just feel like I need some sort of written record that would have my name and dates on it,” Pettem said. “I was inspired by Mary’s stone. I have a book in flowers, just like she has a book in flowers. Now there's stones for friends of mine who are also still alive, like I am, in this little area. So I feel very committed to this cemetery.”
Funding for public media is at stake. Stand up and support what you value today.
